09-08-2026
Wendell Berry
LIKE SNOW
Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly.
leaving nothing out.
STAY HOME
I will wait here in the fields
to see how well the rain
brings on the grass.
In the labor of the fields
longer than a man’s life
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.
I will be standing in the woods
where the old trees
move only with the wind
then with the gravity.
In the stillness of the trees
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.
THE DEAD CALF
Dead at the pasture edge,
his head is without eyes, becalmed
on the grass. There was no escaping
the heaviness that came on him,
the darkness that rose
under his belly as though he stood
in a black sucking pool.
Earth’s weight grew in him,
and he lay down. As he died
a great bird took his eyes.
Where is the horror in it?
Not in him, for he came to it
as a shadow into the night.
It was nameless and familiar.
He was fitted to it. In me
is where the horror is. In my mind
he does not yield. I cannot believe
the deep peace that has come to him.
I am afraid that where the light
is torn there is a wound.
There is a darkness in the soul
that loves the eyes. There is a light
in the mind that sees only light
and will not enter the darkness.
But I would have a darkness
in my mind like the dark
the dead calf makes for a time
on the grass where he lies, and will make
in the earth as he is carried down.
May all dead things lie down in me
and be at peace, as in the ground.
SERENADE IN BLACK
This crow, my love, black bird
That flies across my sight,
Hauls my eye beams down
Upon the horizon.
He will not bear my gaze
Above your house, who drew
My vision thin toward
The immense invisibility
Of his possible flight; nor be
Different in your eyes
Because my eyes have held
Black rhythms of his wings.
This bird, then, shall be
A sign between us. We two,
Who mark our distance on
His flight, have marked
Our eyes with his black wings
The bright sun glittered on.
-from New Collected Poems
Wendell Erdman Berry (August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic and farmer.[1] Closely identified with rural Kentucky, Berry developed many of his agrarian themes in the early essays of The Gift of Good Land (1981) and The Unsettling of America (1977). His attention to the culture and economy of rural communities is also found in the novels and stories of Port William, such as A Place on Earth (1967), Jayber Crow (2000), and That Distant Land (2004).
Berry was an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, and delivered the Jefferson Lecture for 2012. He was also a 2013 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, from 2014 to his death, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[2] Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.[3] On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
